Suggestions

[King Kong]

Post your ideas and suggestions for future versions here!

You can be sure that I'm carefully reading all suggestions and I always try to consider the most of them...

Please don't report bugs here!

[Caspand]

Greetings KK.

I have some suggestions.

First off i'd make some changes to the guilds.

Horsebredders guild should be moved from city to castle since that is where you recruit horses.

Other less attractive guilds should be giving a boost, guilds like Masons guild really aint that great a guild. Muslim factions get spearmilitia from that guild.

Perhaps give some agent bonuses from thieves / assassins guild.

Also i'd like a slight slowdown on the campaign speed, like slightly higher build times in castles/city's. Stuff like wall upgrades should take a bit longer.

A zone of recruitment system would be really cool in SS aswell. I recall i saw a submod for SS with that but is no longer worked on ( ? ).

Change the ram to use the one from Kingdoms, perhaps a personal matter but i find it better.

A system similar to DVL with crowning your king for some various minor bonuses, great RPG element added that way.

Also perhaps a student system similar to the one DVL use, also add alot of PRG elements to your characters, give you a feeling you know them better.

Kingdoms features :

Some of the features in kingdom are just great, like in the american campaign where native americans can "learn" from the european faction by killing X amount of units of that type could be taking into use, like giving Bryz arquebrusiers by killing X amount of gunner units instead of just giving them that unit.

Also from the Teotonic campaign where Denmark can merge with Norway to make a new faction is a great idea, if you destroy Norway and hold key settlements you can choise to make a new faction instead of Denmark, and become The Kelmar union with new banner's, new units ect, that feature is also great imo.

That was all i could think off atm, continue the great work KK.

Caspand

[Ataegina]

Indeed Kalmar Union would be great, but also if this work on both sides (denmark conquer norway / norway conquer denmark)

[Iscariott]

I too would like to see the RPG elements fleshed out. Crowns, and something along the lines of the 'career paths' in dlv. The education system is a good start. And in my latest campaign had my first taste of offends the nobles(actually went well for me! only the adoptee's lost loyalty, and i got them killed in battle. those loyal gained titles and loyalty ), so i'm by no means being critical of SS.

[Asean]

cavalries and cavalry archers do more damage so playing the mongol horde is fun again.

[Emerald-Knight]

Increased fertility for family members. I know that they're doing this for the next version of AD.

[Madden]

i suggest you start all the factions off with a better amount of troops, since there a few that get pwned very early every campaign

[gr33kp1mp777]

Perhaps consider changing the "watchtower" model. It is a primitive twig structure, that could be improved. I remember in RTW, i believe it was RTR. When I went to create a watchtower, it was called a minor-settlement, and functioned the same way as a watchtower but look like a small village. I was VERY impressed. If something of this sort is done in a future SS, I believe the entire community would be VERY pleased.

Thank You!

[whhyy]

Expand the size of forts to make them more fun to use/seige if you can.

More trees for ambushes.

Make low level cavalry units recruitable from racing tracks - it was fun.

[aarronpeake]

hi i totally second the watch tower idea posted by gr33kp1mp777 i've seen this in a fw rome mods and it looked so much nicer

[Edi Birsan]

1. Titles should have triple their effects if the leader is in the titled place.
2. Fire Arrows should not be used in the open
3. Create a Trading Post like a fort or Watch Tower which when placed on a resource allows for the exclusive use of the resource by two merchants that can not be attacked by other merchants.
4. Do not allow Stakes to be placed inside castles
5. increase speed of ships, diplomats
6. ships should not be slowed because of artillery, a full shipload of cargo travels at the same rate regardless of the make up of the weight below decks.
7. stop allowing provinces to be given in exchange for trade agreements
8. allow ships that sit on a trade lane to block that trade lane
9. give leaders greater direct combat bonuses
10. allow all catholic factions to diplome with the Pope without a diplomat.
11. review the cost effective scale of the units again, it seems like in many cases the higher level building support WEAKER troops that are less effective.
12. Allow ports to be functional... discharge of soldiers at non ports cannot move any further that turn. Troops discharged at a port get all excess movement.
13. restructure supply from a function of leaders to a function of units...if it is to be introduced at all.
14. change the melding of units so that you cannot take two weak units at an experience level of say 1 and then when shifting them come up with a unit with greater experieince.
15. do not allow the training of units with high experience to suddenly be built u p to the higher experience level.
16. Allow for the upgrade of units within the same category so that mailed knights can be turned to Feudal Knight and the like for infantry.

[D3nn16]

Hi

I didn't played the SS mod yet because of the money scripts, personally I don't enjoy this kind of challenge.
I read an AI mod is being developed by Xeryx in the Darthmod thread and people using it say it's very good.

My suggestion is to try remove all money scripts and use the XAI mod (I'll try removing them myself if it isn't done anyway).


Here are some ideas I posted in another forum (the guild) in a thread called 1.3 Wishlist (maybe some are already implemented in your mod but they could be useful) :

Some ideas that need to be developed.




About spies and assassins.

Problem : Assassins available for recruitment have very low subterfuge and it's very difficult to get a good assassin by "training" it yourself.

1st solution : make assassins and spies have a starting subterfuge of 5 then apply good and bad triggers.

Problem : If you want a good spy or assassin you have to recruit several ones until you get a good one that can probably fail and you lose too much money for it too.

2nd solution : have 3 flavors of agents.

1st : current low subterfuge (I suppose 0 starting subterfuge + a trigger) assassin (500 cost, 200 upkeep)

2nd : improved assassin with 4 subterfuge minimum (GoodAssassin trait level 4 + "good" trigger(s)) (750 cost, 350 upkeep) only available in any settlement if your faction has an assassin guild anywhere on your territory.

Note : having an assassins' master guild (+1 global) and training your improved assassin in a settlement with assassin guild (+1 local) will give you a 6 or more (according to the "good" trigger(s)) subterfuge agent.

3rd : excellent assassin with 6 subterfuge (GoodAssassin trait level 5 + NaturalAssassinSkill trait level 1 + "good" trigger(s)) (1000 cost, 500 upkeep) only available if your faction has assassins' guild HQ (+2 global) which will mean an 8 or more subterfuge assassin.


About diplomats :

Upgrading town hall buildings doesn't improve the diplomats you recruit in the settlement.
Personally I think it would be a good addition to recruit good diplomats in settlements with high level town halls (level 3 diplomacy minimum with the last level town hall).






Strategic map :

- option for spies to follow other units, for catholic priests to follow Muslim priests for example

- possibility to use your ally's (or any neutral faction) buildings that are idle to make units (sometimes I have lot of good Italian spears waiting to be recruited but not needing them). This possibility should be arranged through diplomacy and bring some money to your treasury and it will also add some guild bonus for recruiting.

- possibility to borrow money from allied/neutral cities that have banks or from the allied/neutral faction itself using diplomats/generals?. Paying money back with interests (similar to a tribute). When other factions borrow money from your city banks the returned money will go in the bank instead of your own treasury and into your treasury if money was borrowed from your faction directly. The amount of money banks can lend should be proportional to the economic activity in the region and to the level of income it has from interests. If a faction starts war with the faction it borrowed money from it will stop paying interests to the enemy faction treasury (or better let the player make the choice) and if your faction borrowed money from a bank of the enemy controlled city there should be an option to stop paying back but that will prevent you from borrowing money again from that bank and/or will hurt your reputation in the financial world . Make faction reputation have an influence on the chances you'll have to borrow money from factions and banks.

- each region will have an amount of money stocked inside its city. Money can be transferred in a turn or more depending on distance, if region has a dock, rebels on roads will prevent money transfer or will reduce the amount depending on rebel stack size, pirates will do the same on seas. Make generals and fleets transport money with them, but there should also be a default way just clicking a button in a city to transfer the money to another city selected in a list. You will have the possibility to automatize the process. This will force you to plan your city development more carefully as money will not always be where you need it.

- city architecture will depend on climate and not on type of faction. For example when conquering Jerusalem and upgrading walls or buildings it will keep its oriental style architecture instead of being transformed in northern-european style.


- Implementing faction emergence :
example :
I just conquered all French towns and faction is destroyed. In the last city I captured I didn't massacre the population. This city was occupied for a long time by the French so people started feeling patriotic (make a patriotic-meter similar to the one for religions). As I didn't massacre the population, unrest will be very high, stacks of rebels will spawn very often (both proportional to the length of time the city was under French control) and try to retake the city. If the rebels do capture the city it becomes a French city and french faction is back again. This should make game more difficult since when you conquer new cities you have to build them from scratch because most of the time you're forced to massacre the population to control it. Also converting a Muslim population into Catholics should have a negative impact on the patriotic-meter toward the Muslim faction









Why should anyone lend you money in-game when you have no obvious way of repaying it with interest (i.e. you can't invest in stocks or anything)?


If my treasury is at the moment around 30000F every turn start I can pay some sort of tribute that can be around 2000F.

Here's another example :
I'm out of money because I used it all to build around in each city.
I need 9600F x 2 more to upgrade walls of 2 cities that attained population of huge cities at the same time. So imagine I pay 10 x (960 + 140) (interest).
You will only pay 2200F / turn instead of using 19200F out of the treasury.
The advantage is that you can build expensive buildings even if your treasury isn't sufficient at the time, so you won't have to wait turns to build one expensive building at a time.




Besides, who in their right minds would actually repay debts in a game in which you can go to war freely with next to no reprecussions?


A better example is when you borrow money to build an army then sack a city that will bring you lots of money to pay back with interest. Of course you can go at war with the faction you borrowed money from but that will hit your reputation and your chances of borrowing money again will be diminished.

The higher your reputation is the more money you will be able to borrow and also paying back all money should be rewarded with a reputation increase.

At start of campaign you don't have banks available so you will borrow from other friendly factions. But once banks are built it should be more easy to do so. Maybe make a money reputation that will be considered by banks before lending money.








Make army and money management more complicated :

- make money be deposited in cities

- make armies able to transport money with them

- an army outside settlements will have to carry money with it to pay the soldiers or make some kind of resupplying mechanism when the army has exhausted all funds (the closest city to the stack will have to send money to it, and if all close cities are very poor you'll have to send money from a far settlement and make soldiers have a fighting penalty or make them desert if money takes to long to come etc.

--making armies carry soldiers salaries isn't very achievable at campaign start because of insufficient funds so you'll have to make war with neighboring regions. A good idea ? would be to make army not need to carry soldiers' wages if they are in a controlled region which will resupply it with money. On the other hand being in enemy territory an army will have to bring the soldiers upkeep with it (or make the money transfer somewhat difficult). This will have as consequence a better military protection of rich regions (having an important army in a poor region will mean transferring money from rich regions to the one the army is stationed in). This will mean other factions will no longer keep armies on your territory doing nothing. An enemy army on roads between regions transferring money to each other will intercept part of this money or just diminish the amounts transferred etc. Armies will no longer be sent far away capturing an isolated castle in enemy lands ready to pump soldiers that can't be payed with the region income alone.
Controlled regions having sea access and connected by sea trade routes should have a good money transfer capability.

- when you sack one city your objective can be to recruit some mercenaries to refill your stack and go on sack the rest of the regions causing damage to the enemy or after your army has gathered enough money you can bring it to a region and from there transfer it all over your empire.

- if you sack a city at one end of your empire it will take some time until at the other end you can recruit soldiers with the money you earned from sacking.

- fighting another army will give you a money reward proportional to what it was carrying








I think there is a way to avoid the upkeep increase.



Each army in a non-controlled territory should have some kind of treasury (like cities) and when it's insufficient for upkeep will go negative and soldiers will start deserting similar to crusades and will fight with a moral penalty. When in a controlled region the army's upkeep will be deducted from the city treasury.

The current problem with sacking is that money can be used immediately to recruit other troops and upgrade buildings in any region you control. That's why money should be transferred slowly between regions.

Money should travel between regions like an agent, it should take some turns depending on distance and amount of money (reducing proportionally the percentage of *money movement points*).
For example sending 10000F from the sacked city to a neighboring region will take 4 turns while sending 1000F will take one turn. This will incite the army to retreat from the sacked settlement to the city it wants to deposit the money instead of continuing to siege other enemy settlements, risking to lose the money or not using it to upgrade buildings. To avoid sending one unit with 10000F there should be a limit of 1000F/unit. A 20 units stack (or less depending on other factors) should have no limit of treasury. A 10 unit army with more than 10000F in treasury will not be able to split up.

Sacking a city will reduce its income and treasury so maintaining an army there will be problematic unless there is a close region that has enough income to send fast.
Not having enough money for the army upkeep in the region should make this region's treasury become negative (transferring money over enemy territory between controlled cities should not be possible – a city surrounded by enemy held regions will have no possibility to make money transfers). This will prevent upgrading of buildings, recruiting additional units and a moral penalty for the under payed army fighting in this region.


Suppose my army just sacked a neighboring city. It can leave part of the booty there that will be transferred (possibility to transfer only when a common frontier with a controlled/allied/neutral territory, controlled land being the fastest and neutral being the slowest way) to regions that you want to develop first. So the time money goes to those cities, the time you recruit units and the time they arrive at your initial army not mentioning that the reinforcement army will have to carry its upkeep when traveling across your poor regions you just sacked, your initial army will have its treasury exhausted (I don't think it can sack a city each turn) or being attacked by enemies and missing reinforcements (unless it hires mercenaries).
In the case of a rich faction you have enough money to recruit reinforcements and send them to the front. Becoming rich will mean less sack at start, or sack and retreat tactic.


To make micromanagement less heavy, cities that don't have enough money to upgrade a building or recruit a unit should automatically make neighboring regions that hold enough money send the appropriate sum (it will take some turns depending on distance, roads, brigands). Of course regions *borrowing* money from other regions will have a slower building and recruiting process.








Inspired by Magudai's post "Campaign Morale/Supply".

The idea I like in his post is about morale penalty/advantage upon troops depending on their position on the map.
Now what needs to be discussed and developed are the conditions that influence a stack's morale.

I took a quick moment to read the Wikipedia article about morale and I thought about some interesting and realistic ideas :

* position on strategic map :
- the more far from an owned region/capital the bigger the morale penalty on stacks with low quality troops (that can eventually start deserting), except for stacks with important objectives like crusades or other (big invasions ?)

- fighting in long time controlled regions will give a morale superiority to your units

- a recently conquered settlement will have an important morale penalty for stacks fighting in it or in neighboring regions (a recently conquered settlement will not give you the same morale influence as a long time controlled settlement) that will decrease proportionally to the time the settlement is kept under control

- morale influence for units fighting in a region surrounded by enemy, neutral or allied or own faction regions (these regions have resp. increasing morale influence). A morale influence capacity is calculated for each region according to the regions around it : long-time controlled regions or short-time controlled, long-time allied or short time allied, long-time enemy regions or short time.
An exception for crusades that already have a deserting system (speed at which distance between stack and objective is diminishing).


* introduction in M2TW of a new strategic element which is a supply line (the invaded faction will have another chance of surviving by attacking an enemy's supply line) that will influence a stack's morale. The implementation of this supply line should be further discussed.


* Make another type of action representing a pillage on an enemy territory (instead of the current system in which you only have to move your stack in an enemy territory to create devastation). Troops that are pillaging will have a bonus on upkeep (needs discussing). Fast cavalry/horse archers units will create the biggest devastation and will have the biggest upkeep bonus.
Devastation and upkeep bonus will be directly proportional to distance of pillaging stack to settlement (I'm thinking that the richer parts of the region are close to capital settlement).


* objective of a stack : similar to crusades
A stack will be assigned an objective as soon as it is created when making it move like it is done currently in the game (attack a settlement/army, go somewhere, enter another settlement, etc with the multi colored line indicating the stack's objective). The objective will be the last target of the line that the stack will move toward before finishing its MvmPts.

A stack with an objective and position inside enemy controlled regions will have a penalty if : I make it move somewhere with no objective (not even pillage) and click for next turn. This will create a morale penalty (troops don't know what they are doing there, low quality troops start deserting if stationed for long time).

For example, an objective penalty will occur if the stack moves to capture an enemy settlement this turn (without reaching it immediately) and the next turn it is given another objective away from the initial one (like crusading army going away from target settlement) . The following turn the stack will still have the first objective assigned until I capture/destroy/pillage the target or I move inside a controlled region.


* authority of the faction leader, authority/other of the stack commander, objective of the stack, number of units in a stack, percentage of complete units in the stack, (anything else ?) influence the morale.


* elite troops should be slightly (or not at all) influenced by position/objective on strategic map while bad troops should desert quickly


* make pillage be function of quality of troops (or type of troops) you have in your stack (peasant troops will earn less money than DFK for example)


* what reason should there be to have peasant units for training ?
Units of peasants should be trained in number of 4 per turn while one unit of DFK should be trained in 2 turns. Maybe a maximum of 3-4 turns for excellent units. This needs discussing if not already done.

[spanish_emperor]

About spies and assassins.

Problem : Assassins available for recruitment have very low subterfuge and it's very difficult to get a good assassin by "training" it yourself.

1st solution : make assassins and spies have a starting subterfuge of 5 then apply good and bad triggers.

Problem : If you want a good spy or assassin you have to recruit several ones until you get a good one that can probably fail and you lose too much money for it too.

2nd solution : have 3 flavors of agents.

1st : current low subterfuge (I suppose 0 starting subterfuge + a trigger) assassin (500 cost, 200 upkeep)

2nd : improved assassin with 4 subterfuge minimum (GoodAssassin trait level 4 + "good" trigger(s)) (750 cost, 350 upkeep) only available in any settlement if your faction has an assassin guild anywhere on your territory.

Note : having an assassins' master guild (+1 global) and training your improved assassin in a settlement with assassin guild (+1 local) will give you a 6 or more (according to the "good" trigger(s)) subterfuge agent.

3rd : excellent assassin with 6 subterfuge (GoodAssassin trait level 5 + NaturalAssassinSkill trait level 1 + "good" trigger(s)) (1000 cost, 500 upkeep) only available if your faction has assassins' guild HQ (+2 global) which will mean an 8 or more subterfuge assassin.


About diplomats :

Upgrading town hall buildings doesn't improve the diplomats you recruit in the settlement.
Personally I think it would be a good addition to recruit good diplomats in settlements with high level town halls (level 3 diplomacy minimum with the last level town hall).

I like your ideas and i believe you should be able to recruit spies with 2 level, 3 level and 4 level, of course making them cost more the higher the level.

Note: level 1 and 0 are of no use because they can't do anything but fail and noone would buy them anyways for that reason

I also agree with your idea to diplomats

[spanish_emperor]

Strategic map :

- option for spies to follow other units, for catholic priests to follow Muslim priests for example


- city architecture will depend on climate and not on type of faction. For example when conquering Jerusalem and upgrading walls or buildings it will keep its oriental style architecture instead of being transformed in northern-european style.


- Implementing faction emergence :
example :
I just conquered all French towns and faction is destroyed. In the last city I captured I didn't massacre the population. This city was occupied for a long time by the French so people started feeling patriotic (make a patriotic-meter similar to the one for religions). As I didn't massacre the population, unrest will be very high, stacks of rebels will spawn very often (both proportional to the length of time the city was under French control) and try to retake the city. If the rebels do capture the city it becomes a French city and french faction is back again. This should make game more difficult since when you conquer new cities you have to build them from scratch because most of the time you're forced to massacre the population to control it. Also converting a Muslim population into Catholics should have a negative impact on the patriotic-meter toward the Muslim faction
.

If spies and other units could follow priests, spies, armies,etc then it would say a heck of time and i wouldn't have to remind myself to move them

I wish city architecture would depend of the region and climate and not on the controlling faction but i believe you can't change it

I remember in MTW where after you destroyed a faction a prince to that faction would appear around its former capital with massive armies and that faction would come back to life. that was awesome and challenging although it occurred many times and it kept you wondering how many sons did this king have. I think there should be something like this.

[Konsul Gando]

I have got 3 suggestions.

1) an AoR would be very fine like that one from the submod, maybe as an option, because not every body would like it.

2) Add the Mangonel to every or at least a few more factions like Byzantium and other *high developed* factions.

3) The kalmar feature is very cool, and you could make it for every faction like: when you have quonqured 30 or more provinces you can get renamed from kingdom of france to the France empire and stuff like that. would be nice

[Caspand]

3) The kalmar feature is very cool, and you could make it for every faction like: when you have quonqured 30 or more provinces you can get renamed from kingdom of france to the France empire and stuff like that. would be nice

This will never be posible to implement for every faction, unless KK removes half of the current factions.

The feature require a "shadow" faction, that take up a hole faction spot of the 21 totaly posible. So infact the kalmar union is already in game in the kingdom teutonic campaign but only unlocked if certaint conditions are met.

Caspand

[Archus]

3) The kalmar feature is very cool, and you could make it for every faction like: when you have quonqured 30 or more provinces you can get renamed from kingdom of france to the France empire and stuff like that. would be nice

awesome idea.

is it possible to implement faction specific name changes. For example

England conquers 30 provinces - English Empire

OR

England conquers 30 provinces and dominates the British Isles - British Empire

is this possible?

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

Name changes would be great; my obsession with the Byzantines would be sated if when they conquered a certain number of regions they became "Neo-Roman Empire" or the like.

[clonas]

It would be cool if a "fire at command" option would be added, When for example huge forces rush on you, you use that command and an extra button pops-up like "80% of forces are ready to fire missiles" and so on, by clicking "FIRE" all the arrows would be fired at the same time, that would be a nice feature, for example when you'd like to suprise the enemy forces by a rain of arrows at short distance, and after that you'd rushed on them with your infantary , which would scare them or so. this would make a great feature for movie making also!

[Elric von Rabenfels]

It would be cool if a "fire at command" option would be added, When for example huge forces rush on you, you use that command and an extra button pops-up like "80% of forces are ready to fire missiles" and so on, by clicking "FIRE" all the arrows would be fired at the same time, that would be a nice feature, for example when you'd like to suprise the enemy forces by a rain of arrows at short distance, and after that you'd rushed on them with your infantary , which would scare them or so. this would make a great feature for movie making also!

Sadly, that's not possible. You can do that manually though, with the pause button, alot of commands, and the auto-fire of the archers turned off.